dilluns, 1 de març del 2021

WAGENSEIL, Georg Christoph (1715-1777) - Orgelkonzert C-Dur, Nr.1

Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817) - Jack in His Glory A Hackney Coach Driven by Drunken Sailors


Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777) - Orgelkonzert C-Dur, Nr.1
Performers: Stefan Johannes Bleicher (orgel);
Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim; Vladislav Czarnecki (leitung)

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Austrian composer, keyboard player and teacher. He can be considered one of the pivotal figures in the development of the Classical style in Vienna with a compositional career that spanned a period from Fux, his teacher, to Haydn and W.A. Mozart, for whom he served as a precursor. Wagenseil’s father and maternal grandfather were functionaries at the Viennese imperial court. In his teens he began to compose keyboard pieces and to receive keyboard instruction with the organist of the Michaelerkirche in Vienna, Adam Weger. His accomplishments brought him to the attention of the court Kapellmeister, Johann Joseph Fux, who recommended him for a court scholarship in 1735; for the next three years he received intensive instruction in keyboard playing, counterpoint and composition from his sponsor and from Matteo Palotta. As a result of an enthusiastic endorsement from Fux, Wagenseil was appointed composer to the court on 6 February 1739, a post he held until his death. He also served as organist from 1741 to 1750 in the private chapel of Empress Elisabeth Christine (widow of Charles VI), and in 1749 became Hofklaviermeister to the imperial archduchesses. To the latter he dedicated four sets of divertimentos, which were engraved and issued as opp.1-4 by Bernardi of Vienna (1753-63). Wagenseil travelled to Venice in 1745 to supervise the production of his first opera, Ariodante, and in 1759-60 he was in Milan for a performance of Demetrio. In the mid-1750s uncommonly generous publication privileges granted by Parisian printers brought about a flood of instrumental compositions, particularly symphonies (see illustration), which raised him to international prominence, and which were undoubtedly responsible for Burney’s high opinion of him. Among those acquainted with his music was the young Mozart, who played one of Wagenseil’s concertos before Maria Theresa in 1762 and several keyboard pieces at the English court in 1764. Haydn was likewise familiar both with numerous instrumental works, as entries in the so-called Quartbuch show, and with Wagenseil’s operas, which found their way to Eisenstadt. Wagenseil was also renowned as a keyboard virtuoso, and elicited the highest praise from contemporaries such as C.F.D. Schubart (who remarked that Wagenseil ‘played with extraordinary expressive power and was capable of improvising a fugue with great thoroughness’). But from about 1765 steadily worsening lameness and an attack of gout which affected his left hand curtailed his activities at court and eventually confined him to his quarters where, according to Burney, who visited him on several occasions, he continued to compose and to teach. Among Wagenseil’s pupils were Leopold Hofmann, J.A. Štěpán, F.X. Dušek, Johann Gallus-Mederitsch, G.A. Matielli, P. le Roy, the brothers Franz and Anton Teyber, and J.B. Schenk. The last, who began instruction in 1774, provided in his autobiography a detailed account of his mentor’s teaching methods which, not surprisingly, were based on Fux (a legacy Schenk was then to transmit to Beethoven later in the century) but which were also remarkable for their time in drawing on Handel and Bach.

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